COMPUTER SAYS "BANG!"

I work on a computer for my living. The computer does not belong to me, because it belongs to the company which bought it for me to use, but I feel a kind of possessiveness over it because we've been through rather a lot together since it was unpacked from its box two years ago after the first of our office burglaries.

It survived the second of our office burglaries when other machines did not, more out of sheer luck than anything else, so it is now, by some margin, the oldest machine in the office.

Not unlike myself, really.

Last Friday, because I had plans for the weekend, it made sense for me to work from home and to work "earlier" than I otherwise would, so that I could get away and hopefully avoid the worst of the weekend traffic.

Anyway, at about noon, after a good, solid four-and-a-half hour stint, I received an email from our administrator at head office and was in the process of reading it when all hell broke loose and the screen started flickering madly whilst not displaying anything very much and, like the wise old trouper I am, I immediately initiated a start-up cycle and switched the machine off.

It then went absolutely nuts for a while, displaying the "purple bands of death" and various other troubling symptoms before I admitted defeat and telephoned my manager to explain the sorry tale.

After a couple of hours of discussions and investigations we found out that this particular machine type, bought at about the time this one was bought, has been troubled by a graphics card problem, and the card might need to be replaced by means of the machine being sent away for repair, which might leave me with lots of work to do - we are, after all, facing another desperate deadline - and nothing upon which to do that work.

In the end I shut it down, bundled it back into its box and did my best to work up some files on a alternative Difference Engine from the dawn of time which has been known to be booted up from time to time just to prove that it still can be.

So these are troubling times for Yours Truly.

The "Inner Chimp" is screeching its worries about being blamed, or the company deciding not to bother with me, or simply not wanting to pay me for sitting around doing nothing for an unspecified amount of time because I have no equipment to work on.

The "Practical Human" part of my brain is, of course, trying to reason logically with the chimp and explain that none of this is my fault, and sometimes things happen that are beyond my control, and that, to be honest, it's really up to my employer to supply me with the equipment with which to do the job that I'm employed to do.

Doesn't stop me from worrying though, and points out how simply our lives can unravel when a device upon which we rely suddenly decides to say "Bang!" and stop co-operating with its human slaves.

On Monday morning, of course, on start-up, the perverse, tricky little beast worked perfectly normally, until at least 11 0'clock when, for no real reason it went "Phutt!" again. Then, after a bit of a rest - about an hour or so - it seemed to work fine for the rest of the afternoon.

But you really can't work like that, and so, after much debate and discussion, it has now been bundled up into a cardboard box, and carted off to the Computer Hospital, and we hope to see it fit and well in about three to five working days, whilst I muddle along as best I can doing what I can to help, whilst bashing at the chunky, clunky keys of its Great-Grandaddy... which remains a frustratingly slow but game old bird, even if some of the shiny new software packages are beyond its capabilities.

It might turn out to be a long week...